The Arrow of Time - Hardcover

Coveney, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517128403 ISBN 13: 9780517128404

Publisher: Random House Value Publishing, 1994

Synopsis

In our century, the subject of time has become an area of serious inquiry for science. Theories that contain time as a simple quantity form the basis of our understanding of many scientific disciplines, yet the debate rages on: why does there seem to be a direction to time, an arrow of time pointing from past to future?

In The Arrow of Time, a major bestseller in England, Dr. Peter Coveney, a research scientist, and award-winning journalist Dr. Roger Highfield, demonstrate that the commonsense view of time agrees with the most advanced scientific theory. Time does in fact move like an arrow, shooting forward into what is genuinely unknown, leaving the past immutably behind. The authors make their case by exploring three centuries of science, offering bold reinterpretations of Newton's mechanics, Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, and advancing the insights of James Gleick's Chaos.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"A whirlwind tour of relativity, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, chaos and more...The book proves to even the scientifically ignorant that science itself can be a labor of love."

The Boston Globe

"[An] extraordinary book...A work of theoretical synthesis, imaginatively written for an intelligent lay audience, that comes to a brain-wrenching conclusion."

The Washington Post Book World

"Straightforward...Scholarly...Intellectually rich...The book manages to capture the excitement and puzzlement of time."

San Francisco Chronicle

"This is an important book....I heartily commend this volume."

John Laurent

New Scientist

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

From Kirkus Reviews

It is the ambition of all research, the authors quote 19th- century scientist Willard Gibbs, ``to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity.'' However, it is the ambition of these same authors (Coveney: Physical Chemistry/Univ. of Wales; Highfield: science editor of the London Daily Telegraph) to demonstrate that simplicity doesn't get you very far in the real (macroscopic) world of time and space. Thus, the die is cast. The authors' aim in this not-so-easy treatise is to find objective bases for the irreversibility of time. Rather than discourse on varying interpretations of time in the manner of Stephen J. Gould in Time's Arrow, or assume the positivist stance of Stephen W. Hawking in A Short History of Time- -where he dismisses time as subjective--the authors make a case for uncertainty and ``dynamical'' chaos. Their approach is historical, pointing out that Newton's laws of motion, Einstein's relativity theory, and quantum mechanics all treat time as symmetrical--time can move forward and backward in the equations. But we know otherwise and so did 19th-century formulators of the second law of thermodynamics--entropy increases and isolated systems move inexorably toward thermal equilibrium. It is only with Prigogine and colleagues, recent computer modeling, and theories of chaos and catastrophe that the authors arrive at a state of the science in which they believe time's arrow is objectively demonstrated. All this may not mean a lot to people who take life, death, and decay as a given. However, for the intellectually curious there is much food for thought. In addition, the authors provide some fascinating examples of biorhythms and patterning in chemical and biological clocks, and in self-organizing systems from slime molds to the mammalian embryo. (Color and b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0517128403
• ISBN 13: 9780517128404
• Binding: Hardcover